Greyhound (10 page)

“Cold as ice, boy,” Monty punctuated. “Probably see that white boy earn a spot in Ripley’s Believe It or Not with a voice like that.”

“You better believe
that
,” Marcus rejoined.

It was the best time I could remember, laughing and listening to them both joke around and argue about different singers. Marvin Gaye was the only other singer they could both agree on.

“Now, you know that brother is smooth.”

“Okay, straight!”

Listening to the two of them was like listening to another language. When I finished eating, I had to get up to pee. I wanted to use the
latrine
before I got back on the bus. I reached into my pocket and absently pulled out my dwindling wad of bills, but I was really looking for the café tickets.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa now, youngun’. Best put that right back in your pannie pockets where you found it,” Monty urged. I wanted to pay for my food but was thwarted.

“But…” I tried.

“C’mon, now. Better listen to your ol’ grandpa. You know how they get when they’re old and crotchety,” Marcus joked at Monty’s expense.

“Who you callin’ old and crotchety, boy? I could take you in a minute.” Marcus tried hard not to laugh and just stared at him with a disbelieving grin. “Well…” Monty hesitated, “if I didn’t have to drive you two all over God’s green earth, and I got my hip too.”

“Go on, now. I’ll take your gear on up to the bus,” Marcus instructed. I left him the bag with my Walkman and Hall and Oates tape and made a run for the bathroom. I had to piss something fierce. Monty and Marcus were both headed outside for a final cigarette before the first boarding calls began.

On my way to the bathroom, I heard more Eagles coming out of the loudspeaker in the ceiling. For once, the boarding calls were almost nonexistent and weren’t constantly interrupting the music, like back in Los Angeles.

When I got into the bathroom, I saw the man in the suit standing at the urinal. He glanced up at me like a falcon sizing up a field mouse. I stepped into the urinal beside him. It was too late to try to hold it now. The urgency to go was pressing and needed immediate attention.

“You better be careful hanging around with that Negro. He’ll get you in trouble before it’s over. Understand me?”

I didn’t respond. I was dumbfounded as to what he was trying to say.

“This is my stop, and I’m getting off here. I’m just waiting for my ride now. But you better be careful.” I kept quiet as he walked slowly around me to the sinks and began washing his face and hands. His suitcase sat behind us against the wall, unattended. I saw tags dangling from the handle that read
SFO
. He’d been on the bus a day longer than I had.

Standing next to him at the sinks, I realized now how much he stank of body odor. The back of his suit was wrinkled badly from being stuck against a sweaty seat for several days. As he dried his face with a paper towel, I looked at him quickly in the mirror, hoping not to be seen. I got an incredibly bad feeling standing beside him. I now completely understood what a “bad vibration” was. I’d heard my mother say it about other women all the time, but that was probably different. I tried to hurry and make my exit through the door, but as I reached for the handle, he stepped in front of me and grabbed for his case, brushing past me at the waist. My brain made a mental note that this was the second time he had made a quick and startling movement toward me. I slipped outside and walked quickly, unsure if it was prudent to run.

“Remember what I said, kid.” I heard his creepy voice behind me, trying to reach me now across the distance. I knew I wanted nothing to do with him and that his advice wasn’t good either. Everything about him struck me as wrong. In my mind, I noted what he looked like in the mirror just in case. His face was beet red and covered in acne. He had beady eyes and a thin mustache that looked like a black line under his nose. The bottoms of his tan suit pants were wrinkled and blackened at the backs, where they had been caught under his shoes while he walked.

Before I made it outside, the overhead announcement came on.
“1364 to Flagstaff, Amarillo, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh. Platform 4. Boarding now. First call.”

The same folks were all lining up to get back on. The porter was helping a few new riders with their luggage. My eyes settled on an attractive young girl who was by herself. She had long black hair that hung straight down around her face. She was wearing a pink plastic jacket with little zippers all over it and tight blue jeans. As I got closer to the end of the line, I caught a glimpse of her face. Her skin was pale and looked as pearlescent as the crisp white porcelain of the bathroom sinks. I’d never seen anyone with skin that pale. She was beautiful, and doing her best to keep to herself. Even though it was midnight, she was wearing dark sunglasses. The terminal was bright—not as bright as Blythe had been, but definitely well lit. She was among the first group of people to get on. After Monty had examined her ticket absently and returned her stub, she quickly stepped up and disappeared inside. I was hoping that she would sit somewhere near us so I could get another look at her face. I hoped she was going to Pittsburgh. My brain fired thoughts off one after another about how all of us would hit it off.

I waited patiently to board, being the last person in line. I was feeling sleepy again and knew that after a short while I’d probably be dead asleep again. I was excited to open up my Walkman, but I had the feeling Marcus was going to tell me to wait till morning to mess with it.

“Alrighty, alrighty, alright. There’s my boy. What’s the word, traveler?” Monty greeted me in his typical jovial tone, hoping for me to have a good comeback. My brain scrambled for something that I wouldn’t stutter over.

“Daryl Hall,” I replied.

“Oh yeah…now ya know!” he shot back, nodding his head yes. He cackled like a madman as I hopped up and stepped carefully down the aisle toward the back. My eyes quickly scanned the seats for the pale-faced girl, wondering where she’d sat. I was surprised and happy to see that she’d taken the two empty seats directly in front of us. The majority of the riders were still congregating toward the front, and the bus was still far from full capacity.

As I passed her, she caught me stealing a glance with a goofy grin plastered across my face. She returned a smile and went back to putting her purse in order. Her overhead light shone above her, making her appear strange and heavenly. I wondered what her name was, but I knew that I wouldn’t ask. If I had to guess, I would’ve said “Amber.” She looked like an “Amber,” especially in the gold light faintly beaming across her face from the overhead console. I took my seat again, edging past Marcus. When I plunked myself down, he handed me my bag with the Walkman, tape, and batteries. I looked at him quizzically as I took it.

“Go on, then. I know you want to check it out and fire it up. If you hand me the tape, I’ll help you unwrap it.”

“Okay. But you’re not going to be mad that I’m making too much noise or listening to music, are you?” I replied.

“Ha ha, you sure are funny,” he quipped, taking the Hall and Oates tape. “Just make sure you don’t listen to it too loud or too long, or fall asleep with it on. You’ll kill the batteries.”

“Alright,” I agreed, as I slowly began prying open the cardboard and plastic box that held the Walkman’s contents. It was the first purchase in my entire life of something that had any real monetary value. I didn’t usually have the luxury of so much money and the freedom to spend it all at once. As I pulled everything out, I quickly realized that there was a lot more packed inside the small box than I had first thought. A black cloth lanyard was wound up and tied close to the top. The next item out was the Walkman itself. It was just as heavy as I’d remembered from holding Marcus’s. Also inside was a leather carrying case that fit the cassette player like a well-made glove. A small folded piece of paper with minuscule writing was tucked inside the back edge of the packaging, neatly out of the way. Examining the manual briefly, I noted that the nice people in Japan had seen fit to print the instructions in an endless collection of languages, all of which, save one, I couldn’t decipher.

Marcus showed me how to put the batteries in, plugged in the headphones, and then explained what the buttons did. He told me about ASF, Dolby, the Hot-Line button, and Auto-Reverse.

“If you’re listening to music and someone says something to you, you don’t need to hit stop,” he said, looking at me for recognition. “Just hit the hot button right there,” his long black finger was pointing out a square metal button on the top of the player, “and their voices will be amplified in your headphones, and the music volume will dim, allowing you to catch what’s being said. Got it?”

“Wow, that’s pretty cool,” I blurted.

“Sure is.”

I pressed play and sat back to absorb my new Hall and Oates tape. When the second song came on, I listened to it intently. “Sara Smile” was one of the songs that Marcus and Monty had mentioned. When it finished, I rewound the tape and listened to it again. It took a while to find the beginning of the song, but it sounded incredible and worth listening to more than just twice. I didn’t know much about singers, but they were both right: Daryl Hall could sing. I’d never heard anything like it. The music reverberated softly in my head and quickly put me at ease. The music was so close, it felt almost alive. Listening to the song over and over made me think of being at my grandma’s, listening to her clock radio at the kitchen table. There was really a world of difference, and I was trying to wrap my head around it.

The bus pulled away, leaving behind another station and letting off even more people in the process. The man in the suit was gone now, as was the old lady who had kept herself busy with her knitting. It was hard to see in the dark who had taken their seats, as no one had his overhead light on and only the dim, yellow marker lights on the floor were illuminated. I wanted to take some notes about the Walkman, “Sara Smile,” Phoenix, and what the man in the suit had told me in the bathroom, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone, especially Marcus or “Amber.”

Through the space in between the seat and the window, I could see the top of her head resting against a small pillow that she had put between herself and the large piece of cold glass.

The lights, streets, buildings, and traffic of Phoenix slowly began to evaporate behind us as we wound around on the dimly lit roads and back out onto the interstate. Maybe Charlotte and Dick were now married and somewhere in San Francisco, out getting drunk and smoking cigarettes instead of face down in that stream as I had imagined earlier. Any thought of Dick angered me. Maybe it was because I knew that my mother had successfully transmitted the message that he was more important, and probably always would be, by shuffling me out of the picture. She had stopped talking about my sister, Beanie, or even mentioning her name after Beanie refused to live with her last year and stayed firmly put at Grandma’s. It had been just over a year since I had left for California, and it was the longest time that Beanie and I had been separated. Beanie didn’t trust Charlotte’s intentions or her sincerity, as all of my mother’s promises usually meant nothing after a few days back together or after she’d got her way. Beanie and I both knew that our mother only wanted her around to watch me when she left for work, for the bar, for the next man, or whatever else was more important at the time. I had the impression that the only reason she wanted us around in the first place was to hold up appearances with everyone who knew her. A single woman is one thing, but a single mother with no kids in sight is another, and exactly what it looks like—suspicious. A single mother with children could at least claim welfare, but a single woman with no children probably went hungry and had to do “other things” to get by and eat. New dresses had to be bought. New shoes were always needed. How else could she trap a man?

I didn’t blame my sister at all for not wanting to be anywhere near her, but it only made me focus on the “why” more often than I should have. It was bad enough never knowing my father, but dealing with a flaky mother too was tiring. I was getting a headache thinking about them. Hopefully my mother and Dick would be happy together, and Beanie and I would never hear from either one of them again.

Marcus tapped me lightly on the shoulder to get my attention. I hit the Hot-Line button as I looked over.

“You still awake?” he whispered.

“Yeah, I guess I was just daydreaming or something.” I got the feeling that he wanted to talk for a bit, so I shut the Hall and Oates down and took off my headphones.

“Soon, this bus ride will be all over. I’ll be back in New York, you’ll be at your grandma’s house, and all this will be just a vague memory.”

“Two days away,” I said.

“Almost three for me, but not much longer for sure.”

“Did you talk to your dad on the phone yet?” I asked. What possessed me to ask that question, I had no answer, but Marcus seemed to be thinking hard about his reply.

“Y’know, Sebastien…I didn’t tell you before, because I really didn’t know you, and it’s not just something a man goes around advertising, if you follow.” I didn’t, but I nodded regardless. I didn’t know much about talking openly with an adult and had never had any experience, but I had been told enough times not to interrupt my mother while she was talking.

He cleared his throat. “I haven’t seen my father in almost eight years,” he began again. “We were always pretty tight, but y’know…things happen. Sometimes…” Marcus stumbled, searching for the right words. “Sometimes, the choices you make may not seem important at the time when you’re making them, but too often they are. My pops died five years ago. I wasn’t able to go to the funeral. Something came up, got in the way. Understand?”

“What came up?” I asked with a blank expression. “Were you stuck in L.A. or something?”

“Stuck in Los Angeles?” He pondered my words. “I guess you could say that. A lot of people I know are stuck out in L.A. at the moment. It’s a pretty messed-up place,” he added, pausing on his thoughts.